Three men now rushed their position from across the street.
McCoy was out of ammo. Bennett was unarmed. So were Galishnikov and Sa'id, pinned down behind him. The three gunmen — their faces covered in black hoods — were running hard, unleashing bursts of AK-47 fire from the hip as they came.
"Donny!" McCoy screamed.
Mancuso looked left and unloaded an entire clip. Two attackers went down. The third kept coming. McCoy went for her spare clips. Bennett could see she wasn't going to make it. This guy was no more than twenty yards away and coming fast. He cleared through the gates, and came up the driveway. Bullets whizzed past him, but didn't stop him. He raised his machine gun. Bennett stared at his eyes. They were wild with rage. Bennett froze. He couldn't move. Couldn't think. Couldn't run. Everything seemed to go into slow motion.
Then he heard it, three loud cracks from a rooftop. CRACK, CRACK, CRACK. It was another American countersniper. The third attacker crashed to the ground. His AK-47 came skidding across the bloody pavement. It came to a stop just a few feet away from where Bennett lay. Bennett hesitated for a moment, then strained to reach it from under the limo. He couldn't. It was too far away. He glanced over at McCoy. She seemed momentarily paralyzed. He'd never seen her like this and it rattled him. He looked back at the gun, then suddenly, without looking, without thinking, Bennett scrambled out from under the car, into the crossfire, grabbed the AK-47 and brought it to her.
"Here — you might need this," he shouted over the gunfire.
The gesture seemed to snap her back into the moment.
"No, you keep it," she said, wiping soot from her eyes. "I'm OK"
She now reloaded her Uzi, then swiveled around, reached inside the car, and grabbed several more ammo clips from a drawer under the driver's seat. She stuffed them in her pockets, and turned back to him.
"OK, Bennett. Back under the car."
"No way, Erin, we 've got too much—"
"Shut up, Jon, and get under the car. You're the only game in town now. It's my job to keep you alive, and I haven't got the time to argue. "
Her glare was intense. She wasn't kidding. Bennett did what he was told. McCoy turned and began firing at militants outside the gates. Bennett got under the car and looked to his right. What remained of the front section of the PLC building was now engulfed in flames. The searing heat was unbearable. He could smell the burnt flesh. He could taste the acrid smoke filling the courtyard. But he could barely breathe and his eyes were stinging with soot and dust.
"Snapshot, this is Rooftop One, over. "
Mancuso could barely hear over the gunfire. But it was the head of his countersniper unit. He had something urgent. Mancuso took the call. He stopped firing for a moment and engaged his wrist-mounted microphone.
"Rooftop, this is Snapshot — go."
"Snapshot, we're taking heavy fire up here. But something's going on over in the courtyard of that mosque across the street. Can't see much from here. But there's a crowd gathering down there — around the corner and down the street about a block from your location. "
"Roger that, Rooftop. Any PA cops over there?"
"Negative, Snapshot. Regular PA police have taken heavy casualties. They seem to have scattered. The radios are filled with chatter that they're bringing in reinforcements. But I don't like the looks of things from up here. "
"You think the mob's headed here?"
"Can't say for sure. But yeah, that's my guess."
"Roger that, Rooftop. Keep your eyes open and stand by."
Mancuso tried to process the situation. They'd all been through years of intense training for an array of worst-case scenarios. They'd all been thoroughly briefed on the possible threats they could face on this trip — specifi cally the threat that radical Islamic groups opposed to the peace process might stage some kind of an attack or disruption. Perhaps a car bomb along the motorcade route to delay or cancel the secretary's meeting with Arafat. Per haps a suicide bombing in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or Haifa to distract attention. Perhaps Molotov cocktails thrown at the motorcade, or a skirmish with Israeli border guards, or an angry anti-U.S. march through the streets of Gaza City or one of the refugee camps. All these had been thoroughly ana lyzed and war-gamed.
But no one in ITA — the Bureau of Diplomatic Security's Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center — or the Tel Aviv field office had talked about, much less planned for, a scenario like this: an inside job by an Arafat loyalist and a coordinated, multilevel attack from forces loyal to… to whom? Who was behind this? Who were they really fighting? They knew Palestinian frustration against Arafat had been intensifying for years. Anger among many Palestinian Islamic leaders at the U.S. for the war against Iraq was to be expected. And in the past few days, Israeli electronic intercepts were picking up all kinds of chatter of dissent against the resumption of peace talks. But neither the Israelis nor the Americans had picked up any serious evidence of internal threats against Arafat himself, certainly not from within the PA's security forces, much less from within Force 17.
Even "outside" Palestinian threats were extremely rare. In 1998, Arafat's security forces cracked down on Islamic militants and put Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin under house arrest. At that point, a Hamas faction known as the Izzedine al Qassam Brigades issued a pamphlet in the territories. They warned the PA to back off or risk igniting the "fires of revenge" against Arafat and "the horrors of civil war" in the West Bank and Gaza. Arafat did back off and other top Hamas leaders publicly distanced themselves from the threats. Nothing happened, and the incident was largely forgotten.
In the fall of 2002, a series of death threats forced Abu Mazen — then serving as Arafat's top political deputy in the PLO — to leave his home in Ramallah and seek safe haven in Jordan. Some said the threats came from Islamic factions because Mazen had publicly denounced the practice of suicide bombing and called the intifada's use of violence against Israel a disastrous mistake that set back the Palestinian cause by years. Others said the death threats came from PA factions close to Arafat after rumors that Mazen might be plotting to overthrow Arafat. Mazen heatedly denied the rumors, but it was clear someone was trying to take him out. Suddenly Mazen was on an extended trip to Jordan, Egypt, and the Persian Gulf — anywhere but the West Bank and Gaza.
A few months later, though, Arafat kissed and made up. Instead of having Abu Mazen arrested for allegedly plotting a coup against him, Arafat named him prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. It seemed a bizarre turn of events. In fact, it was a scene straight out of The Godfather. "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."
But the move spooked radical Islamic leaders. They openly worried Abu Mazen might cave in to U.S. pressure to end the armed struggle against Israel and crack down on the Islamic militant factions. They called Abu Mazen's appointment evidence of a "conspiracy" to destroy the Palestinian "resistance to occupation." Abdallah Al Shami, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, told the Gulf News: "We will continue our resistance to the Zionist enemy with all possible means and we will not be stopped by a Palestinian or a Zionist."
Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a senior Hamas operative at the time, warned Arafat and Mazen that jihad against the Jews was the "sole solution" to the occu pation of Palestine. "Hamas does not believe in political negotiations," he said, adding that the appointment of a Palestinian prime minister was com pletely unacceptable because the position would have the singular mission of "stopping the uprising."